The Flexible Office

With its lower overheads, coffee culture and sharing of jobs and ideas, coworking has revolutionised the traditional workplace

- SILKE COLQUHOUN

A stable, high-speed fibre optic line is non-negotiable for motion graphics artist Adriaan Landman when it comes to choosing a suitable coworking space. That, and a dedicated desk to hold his two 27-inch screens and massive computer box, which houses six hard drives and high-end graphics cards.

'Actually I could work from home," he says. "But the reason why I prefer to rent a desk in a shared office is that I need to be with the right people. There's a great sense of community and energy in our coworking space. We feed off each other.

After eight years with a Durban-based wildlife documentary production firm, Adriaan decided to go freelance. He initially shared an office space in an eco-estate in Kloof but has recently moved to Cape Town, where he rents a desk in the bustling Bo-Kaap, working alongside other motion graphics and visual-effects professionals. There are lots of coffee shops and restaurants nearby, as well as other coworking spaces, such as Ideas Cartel.

'It's easy to move to a different city if you know people in the industry that you gel with and can plug into, he says. 'Our industry is a team effort. The skill set required to produce one animation sequence is so vast that you need to collaborate with others.

'My agreement with Motif Studios, from which I rent my desk for a monthly fee, is that they give me their work overflow. And at times when I'm frantically busy, I pass on some work, like modelling or rigging, to someone in the office who specialises in it, to free up my time.

This spirit of collaboration, mutual support and social connection is what attracts people to coworking which is spelt without a hyphen and defined in Harvard Business Review as 'membership-based workspaces where diverse groups of freelancers, remote workers, and other independent professionals work together in a shared, communal setting!